In what may have been the second-biggest website failure of the young century, HBO Go, the cable channel’s online streaming service, crashed on Sunday night, deflating the anticipation of excited viewers settling in to watch the season finale of True Detective online.

What went wrong? On Monday morning, HBO issued the following statement: “Due to overwhelming interest in the season finale of True Detective, HBO GO was hit with an excessive amount of traffic soon after 9:00 PM ET last night. The issue has since been rectified and the service is now back to normal.”

True Detective, with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, enjoyed fantastic popularity in its first season, racking up 10.9m weekly viewers by the end of February, according to the the Hollywood Reporter.

The company bills HBO Go as an alternative to live television, and access to it is restricted to HBO subscribers, who must pay a fee on top of a regular cable subscription.

HBO Go went black for an unknown number of users at around 9pm ET, when the final episode of True Detective was scheduled to begin.

Due to overwhelmingly popular demand for #TrueDetective, we've been made aware of an issue affecting some users. Please try again soon.

HBO sent a follow-up tweet Monday morning assuring users that “the issues affecting HBO Go last night have been resolved.” But how does a cable channel resolve the “issue” of a too-huge audience? And with the enormously popular Game of Thrones due to return on 6 April, will the unspecified ‘fix’ hold?